So I was surfing Serenes today and some guy found a Japanese blog.Here’s the link. It has a lot of interesting information on it, such as documentation on Gaiden’s internals. However, one certain article piqued my interest.ファミコンアナリシス

There’s actually a hidden debug menu that lets one test the combat! (And no, opening it in the translation does not result in garble.) There’s many variables around to test, and I don’t know what most of them do. I did take some notes from what I could figure out, though.note to self: put this in a more permanent location
Changing the variables changes what settings are used in combat. It’s certainly a lot spiffier than the FE1 version of the battle test, anyway. That was an experience to mess in.
Wanna see this yourself? Set RAM addresses 7E074A and 7E0C0B to 06 in order to access the menu. I recommend BSNES+ for this.

ok kids it’s Translation Time. spent the better part of the day poring over as many corners of this thing as i could find, and this should be just about everything. there’s a fair few values that i can’t seem to get to work, or at least i don’t realise they’re working. anyway. first up,

the upper menu

this bit here. just about all of its settings are related to displays, etc. left hand column is enemy-side unit, right-hand column is player-side unit

EXP Change （ＥＸＰへんか）: right column only. sets the amount of exp the player-side unit gains at the end of the battle

HP Change （ＨＰへんか）: sets the amount of hp that each unit is stated to have taken in the message box at the end of the battle scene in “fast” animation mode. this doesn’t affect and isn’t affected by the actual damage dealt, and is not brought up at all in “slow” animation mode

Dead? (しんだ？): toggles whether or not the unit will live (いきてる) or die (しんだ) at the end of the battle scene. if both are set to die, only the player-side unit will die

MD/Range (ＭＤ／きょり):

the left side is the “MD” setting. toggles animation mode between “slow” (おそい; captions mode) and “fast” (はやい; no-captions mode)

the right side is the range setting. toggles the range at which combat is taking place: “direct” (ちょくせつ) or “indirect” (かんせつ). both toggles prevent any unit whose weapon lacks a compatible range from attacking in the tested battle

Dropped Item (もらったぶき): up to four items can be set to drop at the end of the battle scene

the lower menu

this bit down here. press SELECT to switch between it and the top menu. these alter what each strike made in the battle scene actually does

Damage (ダメージ): sets the amount of damage inflicted by each strike, if set to negative numbers. if set to positive numbers, that strike heals the target’s hp instead

Phase (フェイス): sets the order in which strikes happen. toggles between “player” (プレーヤ) and “cp”. if the first strike is toggled to player, then the strike attack is automatically set to cp, and vice versa. the third strike can be freely toggled to either unit

End (しゅうりょう): sets whether the battle scene continues after the given strike. the first two are set to to “continue” (つづける) by default; the battle scene ends after the first attack to be set to “END”. since only three strikes are possible, the battle scene will end after the third even if it is set to “continue”

Weapon Break (ぶきこわれ): breaks the unit’s weapon after the strike

Critical (ひっさつ): sets the strike to be a critical hit. this does not affect damage, which remains fixed at the amount set earlier, but does play the matching text box and shaking effect.

Attack OK? (こうげきＯＫ？): sets whether the unit is able to make the strike and, if they can’t, the specific circumstances preventing them from it:

Able (できる): unit attacks normally

Range (しゃてい）: unit is treated as if they have incompatible weapon range and does not attack

No Weapon (ブキなし): unit is treated as if they’re weaponless. they are still shown with a weapon on the battle screen, but they do not attack

Imhullu (マフー): the imhullu/darksphere effect blocks the strike

Cleric (シスター): unit does not attack. presumably cleric-related? idek

the start menu

this bit here. press START to bring it up. it tweak a few last player-side elements of the battle scene and its outcomes. press START again to begin the battle scene with the current settings, or press SELECT to back out to the earlier menu bits

Level (レベル): enables a level-up sequence at the end of the battle scene, adding/subtracting the set number to the unit’s set level. can be set to up to +/-9

Strength (ちから): displays a strength stat increase/decrease in the level-up sequence. can be set to up to +/-9.

Skill (わざ): ditto

Speed (すばやさ): ditto

Luck (うんのよさ): ditto

Defense (しゅびりょく): ditto

Weapon Level (ぶきれべる): ditto

Resistance (まほうＤＥＦ): ditto

Movement (いどうりょく): ditto

Maximum HP (さいだいＨＰ): ditto

Hit Number (ヒット数): no idea if this does anything

Arena (とうぎじょう): no idea if this does anything

T. Attack (Ｔ．アタック): set to 1 to enable the Triangle Attack. all strikes performed by the player-side unit will be triangle attacks

Imitate (へんしん): set to 1 when the player unit is a freelancer to test xane’s imitate ability. the battle scene depicts the player unit turning into the enemy unit. unlike the actual imitate, it also copies the enemy-side unit’s name and equipped weapon

Emblem (エムブレム): set to 1 when the player unit is a lord to enable marth’s fire emblem-carrying sprites and animations

HP Period (ＨＰきかん): no idea if this does anything

Wait (ウエイト): no idea if this does anything

a few quick notes on the lists of items, classes and names that you select from. it’s all just the usual internal order, so if you aren’t sure what you’re selecting, consult just about any gameshark guide or nightmare module’s list of this stuff and you’ll have no problems. there is, however, an interesting wrinkle. the debug menu seems to read from a completely separate list of names for these things than what actual game menus use, and there are some very interesting differences. for items…

the book 2 (50) version of aum is pretty interesting. here it’s labeled Ocean Dragonstone (かいりゅうせき), yet another leftover of those scrapped ocean dragons. i guess they just replaced its more dragonstoney elements with an aum duplicate

the unused shadow dragonstone (54) is another interesting one: it’s called the White Dragonstone (はくりゅうせき). maybe they were planning to tie fe2’s white dragon monsters into medeus’s dealie?

the unused aum shard (7A) is called the Amulet (アミュレット)

the starsphere and lightsphere (7D and 7E) have their names swapped around in the debug listings for some reason